A section headed regrets its "hodge-podge and willy-nilly" nature - a motley crew of fairy tales, folk tales, spine-tinglers, free verse and fan fiction. One suspects, though, that Gaiman is not wholly contrite, and that the composition of the collection may itself be a gentle challenge to literary orthodoxy.

Amid the nasty surprises there are bold recastings of traditional stories - including a slick splicing of and ( ) in which Snow White becomes an adventurer queen - and moments of unexpected candour: is, as much as a eulogy for a mentor, a lament for an imagined loss of language and "the slow disappearance of the things I had thought so safely mine". Gaiman also does a good line in dismal seascapes, from the ghoulish drama of to the down-at-heel, Larkinesque dreariness of , in which "loveless folk" eat "slippery eggs" before meeting a sticky end.

Perhaps inevitably, a number of the stories misfire: a pastiche feels jarringly out of place, while an otherwise promising story about a djinn who finds himself unable to grant wishes ends in disappointing sentimentality. Similarly those who are, in Gaiman's words, "Frightened, disturbed or terminally puzzled by poetry" are unlikely to find illumination in these pages.

Overall, however, many of the stories here are little more than imaginative flourishes, between which Gaiman flits mischievously.

The Guardian